Writing a qualitative reportEnsuring quality in qualitative researchEthics and data management in qualitative researchExamples of qualitative report writing: learning the good and bad points

GlossaryReferencesIndex

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ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgements

Part 1 Background to qualitative methods in psychology

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What is qualitative research in psychology and was it really hidden?

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Overview5 What is qualitative research?6 Science as normal practice in qualitative and quantitative research11The beginnings of modern psychology: introspectionismand the founding fathers of psychology14 The logical positivists, behaviourism and psychology17 The quantitative dominance of mainstream psychology20 Statistics and the quantitative ethos in psychology24Conclusion26

Overview30 The growth of qualitative methods in psychology31 The main qualitative methods in psychology up to the 1950s37 The radical innovations of 1950–197044 The recent history of qualitative psychology52Conclusion54

Key points56

Additional resources56

Part 2 Qualitative data collection

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Qualitative interviewing

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Overview What is qualitative interviewing? The development of qualitative interviewing How to conduct qualitative interviews How to analyse a qualitative interview When to use qualitative interviews

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Evaluation of qualitative interviewing82Conclusion83 Key points84

Additional resources874Focus groups88

Overview88 What are focus groups?89 The development of focus groups91 How to conduct focus groups92 How to analyse data from focus groups99 When to use focus groups101 Examples of the use of focus groups102 Evaluation of focus groups105Conclusion106

Key points106

Additional resources107

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Ethnography/participant observation

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Overview108 What is ethnography/participant observation?109 The development of ethnography/participant observation112 How to conduct ethnography/participant observation114 How to analyse ethnography/participant observation120 Examples of the use of ethnography/participant observation122 When to use ethnography/participant observation125 Evaluation of ethnography/participant observation128Conclusion129

Key points130

Additional resources130

Part

3 Qualitative data analysis6

Data transcription methods

Overview What is transcription? Is a transcript necessary? Issues in transcription The Jefferson approach to transcription The development of transcription How to do Jefferson transcription

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When to use Jefferson transcription155 Evaluation of Jefferson transcription156Conclusion158

Key points160 Additional resources160

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Thematic analysis

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Overview162 What is thematic analysis?163 The development of thematic analysis167 How to do thematic analysis168 When to use thematic analysis175 Examples of the use of thematic analysis176 Evaluation of thematic analysis182Conclusion183

Key points184

Additional resources184

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Qualitative data analysis: grounded theory development

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Overview185 What is grounded theory?186 The development of grounded theory191 How to do grounded theory193 When to use grounded theory202 Examples of grounded theory studies203 Evaluation of grounded theory207Conclusion210

Key points211

Additional resources212

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Social constructionist discourse analysis and discursive psychology

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Overview213 What is social constructionist discourse analysis?214 The development of social constructionist discourse analysis231 How to do social constructionist discourse analysis233 When to use social constructionist discourse analysis240 Examples of social constructionist discourse analysis241 Evaluation of social constructionist discourse analysis247Conclusion249

Key points249

Additional resources250

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Conversation analysis

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Overview251 What is conversation analysis?252 The development of conversation analysis259 How to do conversation analysis261 When to use conversation analysis268 Examples of conversation analysis studies268 Evaluation of conversation analysis275Conclusion278

Key points278

Additional resources278

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Foucauldian discourse analysis

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Overview280 What is Foucauldian discourse analysis?281 The development of Foucauldian discourse analysis286 How to do Foucauldian discourse analysis292 When to do Foucauldian discourse analysis295 Examples of Foucauldian discourse analysis296 Evaluation of Foucauldian discourse analysis304Conclusion306

Key points307

Additional resources307

12Phenomenology

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Overview308 What is phenomenology?309 The development of phenomenology315 How to do phenomenological research321 Data analysis326 When to use phenomenology329 Examples of phenomenological analysis329 Evaluation of phenomenology334Conclusion336

Key points337

Additional resources337

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Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)

Overview What is interpretative phenomenological analysis? The development of interpretative phenomenological analysis

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The roots of interpretative phenomenological analysisin the idiographic approach347 How to do interpretative phenomenological analysis348 When to use interpretative phenomenological analysis357 Examples of interpretative phenomenological analysis357 Evaluation of interpretative phenomenological analysis361Conclusion363

Key points363

Additional resources364

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Narrative analysis

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Overview365 What is narrative analysis?366 The development of narrative analysis372 How to do narrative analysis376 When to use narrative analysis382 Examples of narrative analysis383 Evaluation of narrative analysis386Conclusion387

Key points388

Additional resources388

Part 4 Planning and writing up qualitative research

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Writing a qualitative report

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Overview Is a qualitative research report different? Where to aim: the overall characteristics of a good qualitative report395 The qualitative ethos396 The structure of a qualitative report400 The qualitative report in detail404Conclusion422

Key points423

Additional resources423

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Ensuring quality in qualitative research

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Overview How should qualitative research be evaluated? Some quality criteria for quantitative research Evaluating quality in qualitative research General academic justification and features of the research

Overview448 Does qualitative research need ethics?449 The development of ethics in psychology451 General ethical principles for qualitative research454 Ethical procedures in qualitative research456 Debriefing as ethics and methodology471 The ethics of report writing and publication472Conclusion475

Key points476

Additional resources477

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Examples of qualitative report writing: learning the good and bad points

PrefaceBefore the 1980s mainstream psychology was a quantitative monolith smothering all other approaches to psychology, or so the story goes. Around this time,qualitative methods began to emerge in force and they have grown in strength.This is not entirely a fiction but it is a creation myth rather than a precise andhistorically accurate account of the dark days before qualitative psychology.Probably my experience is a little different from that of most psychologists. Atthe end of my first year as a psychology student I was sent for six months tothe factory floor (and eventually the personnel offices) of Morganite Carbonwhich was then in Battersea, London. The reason? Essentially to experiencelife as a factory worker and to write a project on my experiences. In otherwords, participant observation or ethnography – and the experience of reallife. At the end of every couple of terms we were sent to other locations. I spentsix months at the prison in Wakefield and another six months at St George’sHospital, London. At Wakefield, I did my first study of sex offenders (possiblythe first ever study by a psychologist of sex offenders in the United Kingdom).This was an interest which was to resurface years later with my studies of sexual abuse and paedophiles. At St George’s Hospital my colleagues included FayFransella, an important figure in the field of George Kelly’s personal constructtheory – an early precursor of social constructionist approaches in qualitativepsychology. Indeed, I attended the first conference on personal construct theory while at Brunel University and, I am assured though cannot vouchsafe it,was in the presence of George Kelly himself. Actually we got rather a lot ofpersonal construct theory.At Brunel, I remember being fascinated by the sessions on psychoanalysisgiven to us by Professor Elliot Jacques. Not only was Jacques famous at thetime as an organisational psychologist bringing psychoanalytic ideas to industry but he was the originator of the concept of the midlife crisis! However, thekey influence on any psychology student who studied at Brunel University atthat time was Marie Jahoda. Ideas and questions were what counted for MarieJahoda. She had worked with or knew anyone who was important in the socialsciences at large. Sigmund Freud was a friend of her family. She would speakof ‘Robert’ in lectures – this was Robert Merton, the great theorist of sociology. She had worked with and had been married to Paul Lazarsfeld, the greatmethodologist of sociology. And she had been involved in some of the mostinnovatory research in psychology – the Marienthal unemployment study. The‘problem’ – meaning the intellectual task – was key to doing research. The waysof collecting data merely followed, they did not lead; analysis was a way of life.I have a recollection of Ernest Dichter, who figures in the discussion of marketresearch, talking to us about apples – what else. I followed Marie Jahoda toThe University of Sussex and remember the visit of the methodologist of psychology Donald Campbell. My seat was the one next to him. Exciting times.I have never worked in an environment with just a single academic ­discipline –always there have been sociologists, psychologists and a smattering of others.My first academic job was at the Centre for Mass Communications Researchat the University of Leicester. Now it is remarkable just how important the

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xiv preface

field of mass communications research has been in the development of qualitative research methods. For example, the focus group, participant observation,audience studies, narrative/life histories and so forth either began in that fieldor were substantially advanced by it. More than anything, it was a field wherepsychologists and sociologists collectively contributed. Of course, the styles ofresearch varied from the deeply quantitative to the equally deeply qualitative.Different problems called for different methods. I also remember some radicalfigures visiting, such as Aaron Cicourel, a cognitive sociologist influenced byErving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel. Cicourel was a pioneer in the use ofvideo in his research. During a seminar in which he agonised over the issues ofcoding and categorisation I remember asking Cicourel why he did not simplypublish his videotapes. There was a several seconds’ delay but eventually the reply came. But it still seems to me an interesting issue – that ethnographic methods are the methods of ordinary people so why bother with the researcher?Paradoxically, I have always been involved in teaching quantitative m­ ethods –I was paid to do so as a postgraduate and from then on. Nevertheless, in academic life you are what you teach for some curious reason. The opposition ofqualitative and quantitative is not inevitable; many researchers do both. AaronCicourel went along a similar route:I am NOT opposed to quantification or formalization or modeling, but donot want to pursue quantitative methods that are not commensurate withthe research phenomena addressed. (Cicourel interviewed by Andreas Witzeland Günter Mey, 2004, p. 1)He spent a lot of time as a postgraduate student learning mathematics and­quantitative methods:. . . if I criticized such methods, I would have to show that my concernabout their use was not based on an inability to know and use them, butwas due to a genuine interest in finding methods that were congruent or incorrespondence with the phenomena we call social interaction and the ethnographic conditions associated with routine language use in informal andformal everyday life settings. (Witzel and Mey, 2004, p. 1)There is another reason which Cicourel overlooks. Quantitative methods canhave a compelling effect on government and general social policy. Being ableto speak and write on equal terms with quantitative researchers is importantin the type of policy areas upon which my research was based.By concentrating on the problem, rather than the method, a researchermakes choices which are more to do with getting the best possible answer tothe question than getting a particular sort of answer to the question. For thatreason, qualitative approaches are just part of my research. However, wherethe question demands contextualised, detailed data then the method becamelittle more than me, my participants and my recording machine. Some of myfavourites among my own research involved just these.Qualitative methods in psychology are becoming diverse. Nevertheless,there is not quite the spread of different styles of research or epistemologiesfor research that one finds in other disciplines. Ethnographic methods, for example, have not been common in the history of psychology – a situation whichpersists to date. But discourse analytic approaches, in contrast, have becomerelatively common. This is not to encourage the adoption of either of thesemethods (or any other for that matter) unless they help address one’s research

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preface xv

question. This may not please all qualitative researchers but any hegemony interms of method in psychology to my mind has to be a retrograde step. So thisbook takes a broad-brush approach to qualitative methods in psychology. Firstof all, it invites readers to understand better how to gather qualitative data.These are seriously difficult ways of collecting data if properly considered andthere is little excuse ever for sloppy and inappropriate data collection methods.They are simply counterproductive. It is all too easy to take the view that anin-depth interview or a focus group is an easy approach to data collection simply because they might appear to involve little other than conversational skills.But one has only to look at some of the transcripts of such data published injournal articles to realise that the researcher has not put on a skilled performance. It needs time, practice, discussion and training to do qualitative datacollection well. Secondly, I have covered some very different forms of qualitative data analysis methods in this book. These are not all mutually compatibleapproaches in every respect. Their roots lie in very different spheres. Groundedtheory derives from the sociology of the 1960s as does conversation analysis.Discourse analysis not only has its roots in the ideas of the French philosopherMichel Foucault but also in the sociology of science of the 1970s. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is dependent on phenomenology with its rootsin philosophy and psychology. Narrative analysis has a multitude of roots butprimarily in the narrative psychology of the 1990s. And thematic analysis?Well – it all depends what you mean by thematic analysis as we shall see.There is an important issue to raise. Perhaps it is best raised by quoting fromKenneth J. Gergen, one of the key original figures in the move towards qualitative methods in psychology. In the following he describes his early experienceas a psychological researcher:My early training was in scientific psychology, that is, a psychology based onthe promise that through the application of empirical methods, sound measures, and statistical analysis we would begin to approach the truth of mentalfunctioning . . . I learned my lessons well, how to produce from the messyconfines of laboratory life the kinds of clear and compelling ‘facts’ acceptable to the professional journals. A few tricks of the trade: pre-test the experimental manipulations so to ensure that the desired effects are obtained;use multiple measures so to ensure that at least one will demonstrate theeffects; if the first statistical test doesn’t yield a reliable difference, try othersthat will; if there are subjects who dramatically contradict the desired effect,even the smallest effect can reach significance; be sure to cite early researchto express historical depth; cite recent research to demonstrate ‘up-to-date’knowledge; do not cite Freud, Jung or any other ‘pre-scientific’ psychologist;cite the research of scientists who are supported by the findings as they arelikely to be asked for evaluations by the journal. Nor was it simply that mastering the craft of research management allowed me to ‘generate facts’ in thescientific journals; success also meant research grants, reputation, and higherstatus jobs. (Gergen, 1999, p. 58)Quite what Gergen hoped to achieve by this ‘confession’ is difficult to fathom. As a joking pastiche of mainstream psychology it fails to amuse. In writingthis book, I hope to share some of the very positive things that qualitativepsychologists can achieve and important ideas which can inform the researchof all psychologists irrespective of their point of balance on the qualitative –quantitative dimension. Making research better, then, is an important objective

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xvi

PREFACE

of this book – deriding the work of researchers struggling, as we all do, to understand the world they live in is not on my agenda. Research is about knowingin the best way possible – which is not an issue of the general superiority of onemethod over others.This book has a modular structure. It is not designed to be read cover tocover but, instead, it can be used as a resource and read in any order as needdemands. To this end, the following pedagogic features should be noted:●

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There is a glossary covering both the key terms in qualitative analysis in thisbook and the field of qualitative research in general.Most of the chapters have a common structure wherever possible. So thechapters on data collection methods have a common structure and the dataanalysis chapters have a common structure.Material is carefully organised in sections permitting unwanted sections tobe ignored, perhaps to be read some time later.Each chapter includes a variety of boxes in which key concepts are discussed,examples of relevant studies described, and special topics introduced.Each chapter begins with a summary of the major points in the chapter.Each chapter ends with recommended resources for further study includingbooks, journal articles and web pages as appropriate.

This third edition provides a welcome opportunity to provide separate chapters for each of the main types of discourse analysis – social constructionistand Foucauldian discourse analysis. Furthermore, examples showing how towrite up qualitative research have been provided in the final chapter. These areannotated with comments concerning each of the reports. You should be ableto find more problems and issues than have been identified in the text and, ofcourse, your ideas may well be better than mine.Dennis Howitt

Lecturer ResourcesFor password-protected online resources tailored to supportthe use of this textbook in teaching, please visitwww.pearsoned.co.uk/howitt

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAuthor’s acknowledgementsA lot of people have contributed their talents and skills to turning my manuscript into this highly polished product. My debt to them is enormous and Iwould like to mention at least some of them:Lina, Aboujieb (Editor): Lina’s stay at Pearson was short but working withher on projects was a pleasure. She contributed a fresh perspective on things.Kevin Ancient (Design Manager): Kevin did the text design which makes thebook so attractively structured. Kelly Miller (Senior Designer) did the excellent cover design.Carole Drummond (Senior Project Editor): Carole did amazing work overseeing the progress of the book from manuscript to book.Jen Hinchcliffe (Proof reader): Jen is a formidable proof reader but helpful inso many ways.Phyllis Van Reenen (Indexer): A book without an index is hard to use. Phyllishas skilfully produced first class indexes.Ros Woodward (Copy editor): It is always a joy to work on a manuscript withRos. She is so good at spotting problems and keeping me on my toes.The advice of academic colleagues is always welcome. Their advice greatlyimproved the contents of the book. So I am extremely grateful to the followingfor their constructive and supportive comments:DrDrDrDrDr

Darren Ellis, University of East LondonNaomi Ellis, Staffordshire UniversityAlexandra Lamont, Keele UniversityJane Montague, University of DerbyDennis Nigbur, Canterbury Christ Church University

Finally, the most special of thanks in appreciation of their very special supportat a difficult time for me to Carole Drummond, Dr Jane Montague and JaneyWebb (Publisher).Dennis Howitt

Publisher’s acknowledgementsWe are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright­material:

FigureRoutledge/Taylor & Francis (for Figure 8.3) Strandmark and Hallberg’s modelof the process of rejection and expulsion from the workplace from ‘Being rejectedand expelled from the workplace: experiences of bullying in the public servicesector’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4(1-2), 1-14 (Strandmark, M.and Hallberg, L.R-M., 2007).

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Part 1Background toqualitative methodsin psychologyQualitative methods have gained ground in psychology in recent years. It is common tosuggest that, for the most part, the growth of qualitative psychology began in the 1980sat the earliest. This means that qualitative methods fared poorly in the early years of psychology. Qualitative methods had found popularity in the field of marketing psychologysomewhat earlier (Bailey, 2014). Nevertheless, for social psychology, health psychology,psychotherapy and counselling psychology, among others, the 1980s marked the start ofthe period of growth. At this time, theoretically based and philosophical approaches toqualitative psychology began to be developed in some force. They were also practicableand applicable. Despite this, there is a much longer qualitative tradition which needs tobe acknowledged. Without doubt, though, mainstream psychology overall has been apredominantly quantitative discipline for much of its history and is likely to remain so intothe foreseeable future. Mainstream psychology justifies the description ‘quantitative’ injust about every respect. Throughout the history of psychology, numbers and countinghave been paramount. Despite this, from time to time, qualitative approaches have madea significant impact on psychology. Indeed, qualitative methods hark back to the dawnof modern psychology in the late nineteenth century. Qualitative research was generallysomewhat fragmentary and scarcely amounted to a qualitative tradition in psychology.Surprisingly, qualitative methods in psychology have involved such major figuresas Frederic Bartlett, Alfred Binet, John Dollard, Leon Festinger, Anna Freud, SigmundFreud, Carol Gilligan, Karen Horney, William James, Carl Jung, Laurence Kohlberg, KurtLewin, Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget, David Rosenhan, Stanley Schacter, Wilhelm Stern,E.B. Titchener, Lev Vygotsky, John Watson, Max Wertheimer and Philip Zimbardo according to Wertz (2014). And there are more. Some are primarily regarded as quantitativeresearchers but nevertheless included qualitative approaches in their research output.A notable feature of the list is the number of psychologists of European origin givenAmerica’s traditional dominance in psychology. There are good reasons for this as we shallsee. Furthermore, again according to Wertz, it is notable that two psychologists have beenawarded Nobel prizes (in Economics) for their work. These are Herbert Simon and DanielKahneman. Their prize-winning research was based on verbal descriptions and qualitativeanalyses of everyday problem solving. From this they developed mathematical models.

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2 PART 1 Background to qualitative methods in psychology

So there is nothing incompatible between the adoption of qualitative methods in psychology and research success in psychology.The usual explanation of the dominance of quantitative methods in psychology is thatthe discipline sought to emulate the achievements of the natural sciences – particularlyphysics. What is perhaps a little more difficult to explain is why psychology resisted themove to qualitative research so steadfastly despite changes in closely related disciplinessuch as sociology and anthropology. Just why psychology has been perversely antagonisticto qualitative methods in its past needs explanation. The two chapters which constitutePart 1 of this book have the following major objectives:

• To provide a broad understanding of how qualitative psychology differs from quantita-

tive psychology.• To provide a review of the history of psychology which explains just why qualitativemethods emerged so slowly in most of psychology compared to related disciplines.• To provide a picture of the development of qualitative psychology from within thediscipline, under the influence of related disciplines such as sociology and, as a consequence, of some disillusionment with the methods of mainstream psychology.The philosophical (epistemological) foundations of qualitative psychology are verydifferent from those of quantitative psychology. Psychology has been so resolutely quantitative that many psychologists may experience something of a culture shock when firstexposed to qualitative methods. In that sense qualitative and quantitative research can beseen as two different cultures. Some newcomers may well find their appetites whetted fornew research challenges. Qualitative psychology rejects, questions and even turns on itshead much which is held sacrosanct by mainstream psychologists.To date, histories of qualitative research in psychology tend to be fragmentary and,at best, incomplete. They are partial histories – partial in both meanings of the word.Histories of psychology usually take a broad sweep approach so that undervalued researchis lost to future scholars. Re-examining the vast backlog of psychological research andtheory seeking qualitative work is a major undertaking. Different histories have differentstarting and end points. For American historians of psychology the starting point is oftenthe work of William James – a likely starting point of virtually any American history ofmodern psychology (Howitt, 1991). For some qualitative psychologists the story barelypre-dates the 1980s. Each of these is discussed in more detail later. Histories, like mostaccounts, tend to be self-serving in some way. Furthermore, it has to be remembered thateven within the field of qualitative psychology different interest groups vie for dominance.Qualitative methods are not necessarily any more compatible with each other than theyare with mainstream psychology.Just what are the characteristics of mainstream psychology? Qualitative psychologistsoften allude to the idea that mainstream psychology smothered qualitative psychology dueto its foundations in positivism. Positivism is essentially a description of the assumptionsand characteristics of the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. For example,these sciences are characterised by the search for universal laws, quantification andempirical investigation. It is often argued by qualitative researchers that psychology rushedto adopt the model of science offered by physics to the detriment of psychology. Throughnumerous repetitions this sort of claim has become accepted as the truth. However, itis questionable, as we shall see, whether qualitative approaches to psychology are trulyanathema to positivism. So use of the term positivism should be somewhat guarded. Whatdoes seem clear though is that the majority of psychologists for most of the history ofmodern psychology adopted research practices based on quantification.There are good reasons why psychologists emulated an idiosyncratic version of thenatural science approach. It hardly has to be said that science had achieved remarkablesuccess in the nineteenth century, especially physics. Similar successes would ensurethe future of the fledgling discipline of psychology. So psychology stole from the natural sciences things like experimentation, universalism, measurement and reductionistthinking and clung to them even when the natural sciences did not. What psychologyfailed to take on board were the more observational methods characteristic of otherscientific disciplines such as biology and astronomy. Some closely related disciplines

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PART 1 Background to qualitative methods in psychology 3

such as ­sociology were in the long term less handicapped by the strictures of positivism,although not entirely so. Sociology, however, turned to qualitative methods rather sooner.Nevertheless, only in the 1950s and 1960s did qualitative methods develop sufficiently insociology to effectively challenge the supremacy of quantitative methods. So the positivistic orientation that dominated psychology cannot alone account for the late emergenceof qualitative methods in that discipline. It took psychology at least three decades to catchup with the qualitative upsurge in sociology from which it adopted several qualitativeapproaches from the 1980s onwards. In other words, psychology was in the grip of positivism for longer than related disciplines. The explanation is probably simple – positivisticpsychology was able to service many of the areas which the State was responsible for aswell as commercial interests. We only have to consider clinical psychology, educationalpsychology, forensic psychology, prison psychology, marketing psychology and industrialpsychology to see this. Positivism helped psychology to expand in universities and elsewhere in a way that simply did not happen for closely related disciplines (with the possibleexception of criminology within sociology).So a form of positivism did dominate for a long time in the history of modern psychology but not entirely to the exclusion of everything else. The idea of qualitative psychologybeing repressed by but eventually overcoming the dragon of positivism is a heroic viewof the history of qualitative psychology but not entirely correct. One only has to considerhow familiar the work of psychologists such as Piaget, Kohlberg and Maslow has beento generations of psychologists to realise that the story is somewhat more complex.Attributing the late emergence of qualitative psychology to the stifling influence of positivism amounts to a ‘creation myth’ of qualitative psychology rather than a totally convincing explanation. But numbers and measurement have dominated and still do dominatepsychology for most of its modern history. Critics have frequently pointed to the failingsof mainstream psychology but have never effectively delivered a knockout blow. Somepsychologists freed themselves from the straitjacket of mainstream psychology often withgreat effect. They never, however, managed to effect a major and permanent change.There would be changes in the hot topics of psychology and some measuring instrumentsreplaced others as dish of the day but, in the end, if one got the measurements and numbers right then science and psychology was being done. But we have now reached a stagewhere it is freely questioned whether mainstream psychology’s way of doing things is theonly way or the right way. This is important as it ensures that more attention is being paidto the philosophical/epistemological basis of the parent discipline. Method rather thandetailed procedures have to be justified in qualitative research in a way that they rarely,if ever, were in quantitative psychology. Quantitative researchers had no such need forself-justification. The positivist philosophy underlying their work is built into the discipline,adopted usually unquestioningly, and to all intents and purposes is largely still taught asif it were the natural and unchallengeable way of doing psychology. Few outside qualitative psychology question the importance of reliability and validity checks for example. Allof these things and more are questioned when it comes to qualitative psychology. Anytextbook on qualitative methods has to go into detail about the epistemological foundations of the method employed. Still, after qualitative methods have become increasinglyaccepted in journals, qualitative journal articles frequently enter some form of philosophical discussion about the methods employed.One problem for newcomers to qualitative research is that qualitative research methods vary enormously among themselves. Most have complex epistemological foundationswhereas some, especially thematic analysis, lack any substantial epistemological roots.Therefore, although qualitative research is clearly different from quantitative research,so too are many of the qualitative methods different from or even alien to each other.A practical implication of this is that qualitative researchers need to understand thesematters to carry out their work.Merely dismissing mainstream quantitative psychology because of its weaknesses is noway forward since, like it or not, quantitative research has provided an effective and rewarding model for doing at least some kinds of psychology. It is a very bad way of answeringsome sorts of research questions and makes other research questions just about impossibleto address. Nevertheless, mainstream psychology has achieved an influential position in the

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4 PART 1 Background to qualitative methods in psychology

institutions of the State because it is seen as doing some things right. This proven trackrecord is undeniable in fields such as mental health, medicine, education, work, consumerbehaviour, sport, training and so forth even if one wishes to challenge the nature of theseachievements. But psychology could be better and qualitative psychologists have identifiedmany of its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Histories of psychology are written with hindsight and read with hindsight. It is impossible – albeit desirable – to understand historicalevents as they were experienced. So the story of qualitative psychology that can be writtenat this time suffers from our incomplete perspective on what psychology was like in thepast – as a discipline and institution as well as a corpus of knowledge. Neither are we surewhere qualitative research is heading so the end points of our histories is unclear.We should, then, not simply overlook non-intellectual reasons why qualitative psychologyemerged any more than we should overlook them in terms of the mainstream discipline. Forexample, the numbers of psychology students graduating today are massive compared withthe early days of the discipline or even 30 years ago. Furthermore, psychological researchwas once almost entirely based in university departments. Over the decades, researchby practitioners in non-university settings has greatly increased as the practical fields ofpsychology have increasingly adopted a knowledge-based approach. Academic researchwould need to be more socially contextualised and probing if it were to be of immediate useto practitioners. It may well have been easy to patrol psychology to promote quantitativeapproaches when modern psychology was in its infancy. With the expansion in the numbersof psychologists which increased enormously following the Second World War, this sort ofcontrol inevitably, if gradually, weakened. The permeation of qualitative methods into healthpsychology is perhaps an example of these processes at work. Health psychology simplyneeded the sorts of answers to research questions which qualitative methods provide.Histories of qualitative psychology have not yet begun to seriously address the broadercontext of psychological research as a stimulus to qualitative research in psychology.Increases in the number of psychological personnel, especially given the growth in practitioner research, may have allowed the changes which fuelled the expansion of qualitativemethods in psychology. Other fields of psychology, besides qualitative methods, beganto flourish in the 1980s and 1990s – these include largely non-qualitative sub-fields ofpsychology such as forensic psychology. Forensic psychology had lain largely dormant fromthe early 1900s only to begin to prosper in the 1980s – exactly the same time that someresearchers see qualitative methods emerging with some force in psychology. The point is,of course, that as psychology approached a critical mass and developed an increasinglydiverse organisational structure, it gained greater potential to embrace a wider variety ofinterests. Indeed, some might say that the critical mass encouraged these changes.Chapter 1 concentrates on two things:

• Describing the essential characteristics of qualitative methods in psychology.• Discussing the origins of quantification in psychology, including statistical thinking.The chapter demonstrates something of the subtlety of the philosophical underpinnings of the quantitative–qualitative debate.Chapter 2 looks at the varied contributions of an essentially qualitative nature thatpsychologists have made throughout the discipline’s history. At the same time, the chaptertries to explain the roots of these approaches in psychology and related disciplines. Thefollowing seem clear:

• Qualitative approaches have been part of psychology throughout its modern historythough numerically in a minor way.

• Many of the early examples of qualitative research in psychology have become ‘classics’

but it is hard to find a clear legacy of many of them in the history of modern psychology.• Most of the early examples of qualitative research in psychology involve distinctlyqualitative data collection methods although distinct and frequently used methodsof qualitative data analysis did not really emerge until the 1950s and 1960s in relateddisciplines and, probably, not until the 1980s in psychology.• Qualitative psychology has developed a basis in the institutions of psychology (learnedsocieties, conferences, specialised journals, etc.) which largely eluded it in its early history.

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Chapter 1

What is qualitativeresearch inpsychology and wasit really hidden?Overview• The

evidence is that qualitative research in psychology has emerged as an important but­ inority focus in psychology during the last 30 or 40 years. This progress has not been spreadmevenly geographically or in terms of the sub-fields of psychology. Although there is a long historyof qualitative methods in psychology, it is mainly since the 1980s that qualitative methods aregenerally acknowledged to have made significant inroads. However, the story is not the same inevery sub-field of psychology.

• Among the distinguishing features of most qualitative research is the preference for data rich indescription, the belief that reality is constructed socially, and that research is about interpretation and not about hypothesis testing, for example.

acteristics of science in terms of numbers and quantification which, arguably, are not essentialfeatures of science.

• Positivism (the way physical science is/was seen to be done) has frequently been blamed for

the distorted nature of psychology’s conception of science. This, however, tends to overlook thatboth Comte’s positivism and logical positivism were more conducive to qualitative methods thanmainstream practitioners of psychology ever permitted.

• The dominant psychologies since the ‘birth’ of psychology in the 1870s have been introspectionism, behaviourism and cognitivism.

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6 PART 1 Background to qualitative methods in psychology

• The ‘quantitative imperative’ in psychology has ancient roots in psychology and first emerges in

the work of Pythagoras. The imperative involves the belief that science is about quantification.Early psychologists, with their eyes cast firmly in the direction of physics as the best model tofollow, imbued modern psychology with the spirit of quantification from the start.

• Statistical methods, although part of the ethos of quantification, were largely fairly late introductions into psychology. That is, psychology was dominated by quantification long beforestatistical analysis became central to much research.

• Quantification in psychology, including statistical methods, provided part of a highly successful

‘shop front’ for psychology which served it particularly well in the market for research moniesthat developed in the United States especially in the second half of the twentieth century.

What is qualitative research?According to Smith (2008), ‘We are witnessing an explosion of interest in qualitativepsychology. This is a significant shift in a discipline which has hitherto emphasized theimportance of quantitative psychology’ (p. 1). More extravagantly it has been written:‘qualitative inquiry has now been seated at the table of the discipline, representing perhapsa paradigm shift – or at least a pendular swing – within psychology’ (Josselson, 2014, p. 1).Augoustinos and Tileaga (2012) are in no doubt that the introduction of the qualitativemethod of discourse analysis into social psychology in the 1980s amounted to a paradigmshift, though they do not explain precisely what they mean by this. A discipline may incorporate new paradigms without older paradigms being toppled. The history of qualitativeresearch in psychology is somewhat enigmatic but there is a history nonetheless. Evensince the first edition of this book, it has become clear that various forms of qualitativepsychology have gained rather more than a toe-hold in the discipline of psychology. Thesituation varies geographically but education and training in qualitative methods is at lastseemingly common among psychology programmes in some parts. In the UK, for example,few psychology students fail to achieve such training (Parker, 2014) and doubtless fewerwill in future. It is no longer possible to ignore qualitative methods in psychology. Thisdoes not signal the imminent or eventual demise of mainstream psychology. Mainstreampsychology has achieved a great deal of worth despite its flaws. Qualitative research is notthe best answer in every case to every sort of research question any more than quantitative research is. Of course, psychology can benefit by incorporating new ways of doingresearch but mainstream psychology has prospered and no doubt will continue to prosperinto the foreseeable future. Psychological research in general has greatly expanded overtime and this is likely to continue with the expansion of the knowledge-based society.Researchers need to be increasingly sophisticated as new demands are placed on thediscipline for research to guide practice and to inform change. Qualitative methods aredecidedly part of the future of psychology and they may become increasingly integratedwith other forms of methodology. The customers for psychological research have becomeincreasingly sophisticated about research and more inclined to demand innovation in themethodologies employed. Developments may seem slower in some countries than othersbut the impression is that it is only a matter of time before they will catch up. We mayexpect that the research careers of many psychologists in the future will show movementto and from qualitative and quantitative research as well as mixed research. Some maydoggedly remain quantitative researchers and others, equally, tie themselves solely toqualitative approaches.